A Place to Call Their Own

“To Catch A Goat” takes place in the same basic setting as Rumors of War, but a different place within the same world. I was thinking today about how some things might seem odd, and how I might make them, uh, less so. For instance, while working on today’s entry in TCAG, I realized that it might seem odd to have three temples. It isn’t even a terribly wealthy city.

I had to think about it myself, for a bit. There’s a good enough reason for me, but it might not make sense that there would be so many — two reasons I came up with (that don’t spoil any of the plot) are first, that the city is large enough to accommodate three temples, and second, that temples stand in for other major civic centers or buildings, like courthouses, markets, and banks, storehouses, or treasuries.

While I think the second point stands well enough on its own, the first point had me thinking about the city and the surrounding towns and villages. In Rumors of War, we see only a few small sections of the city of Odesos, and in “To Catch A Goat,” we see parts of Chaika that the characters visit. While the surrounding towns and villages might have shrines, the cities have several — they’re a centralized location.

I was trying to think how I might show that in the context of either — a way to expand the setting in a meaningful way, one that makes sense. I thought I could have the characters travel to some of the smaller villages scattered around the cities, have them meet travelers en route to the city temples. Maybe it’s a big deal to travel, or maybe it’s just like a day trip that the family would make once a week.